Devil's Bargain

By

Parhelion

I

On the whole, Prester Lammert decided, being executed by the invaders would have been easier than dealing with his Prince again.  No matter how painful the results, a bold gesture of defiance would still be simpler than combing out the knots and tangles of his long friendship with Prince Caine.  And martyrdom had its appeal, especially given the sorts of people the Ossians chose to execute these days.  A man could be proud to join such company.

Such thoughts were self-indulgent, though, and melodramatic as well.  Lammert knew that he helped his fellows as a priest and served his country by working with the Resistance.  Difficult or not, his choice to live had been obvious.  Even now his choice was obvious, now when he was arriving back in the capitol to pay the price for his decision.

Lammert wiped a circle on the train window free of condensation with the sleeve of his grey serge gown.  Peering through the thick glass, he could just make out the squad of security troops waiting on the station platform, prepared both to haul off anyone from this train whose papers didn’t meet their Ossian standards of legitimacy and to intercept anyone who tried fleeing from the train before being checked.  In the train’s main corridor, inspectors would be working their way from compartment to compartment examining travel passes and identifications.  Such disruption should have become routine after half a year of military occupation by foreign troops, but the citizens of Charbone still weren’t entirely resigned to the delay.  Lammert could see the crowd, made up of all the various people who’d come to meet passengers, jostling and shoving against the security troops.

The Ossian troops were not responding well to the chaos.  Following what looked to be a snapped-out order, they wheeled on the crowd.  That was when an all-too-familiar figure sauntered through the mass of people, who parted before him like red velvet curtains before a master-singer.

Lammert saw the familiar, skilled tailoring, cut to flatter an athletic body almost indecently trim, especially given the dissipation in which that body was usually engaged.  Short blond hair, odd brown eyes, and a mannered arrogance quite appropriate to the blood royal:  here were all the hallmarks of Prince Caine.  Involuntarily, Lammert’s lips stretched into a smile.  He didn’t bother to chide his breath for catching, his heart for beating faster.  He was much too used to both phenomena to bother.  Nor was he surprised that two years apart hadn’t lessened Caine’s power over him.

In any case, Lammert had other worries.  Displaying his usual, insouciant demeanor, Prince Caine seemed determined to accost the security squad leader, probably to demand directions just as if the man was a Charbone Traffic Warden.  Fumbling with the window, Lammert managed to slide the panel of glass back before Caine could finish insulting the Ossian.  “Your Serenity!”

Looking up, Caine’s expression brightened.  “Hah, there you are!”  Ignoring both the civilians and soldiers as if he expected them to disappear from his path without prompting - which they did - Caine strolled over to Lammert’s compartment.  Reaching up, he hooked both long, pale hands over the edge of the open window and called up, “Little lamb, little lamb, let me in, let me in.”

“I’m not a sheep, your Serenity, but you do have something of the wicked mountain wildcat from the kidling’s tale about you,” Lammert retorted.  He tried to make his voice stern but knew his smile entirely ruined the effort.

“My belly twists with hunger and the farmer isn’t home.  So I’ll make us a lovely stew,” Caine almost chanted, finishing the classic lines with evident relish.

“As if a farmer would truly be much protection for a lamb.”  Lammert reached over to the compartment’s outside door and unlatched the handle.  If Caine was going to overreact to their long separation, best to find that out now in this rare space suspended between public and private.

Caine opened the door and clambered up the metal steps.  He paused in the doorway to examine Lammert.  For a moment there was an air about the compartment much like that before lightning struck.  Then Caine took a deep breath and said, “I see you, Lammert.  Still so very large, my heart?”

“I see you, Caine.  The last time I checked, neither advanced mathematics nor academy lecturing make a man shrink.”  Lammert was restraining a few urges of his own, if only towards the fraternal embrace that should have punctuated their greetings.  But such proximity might be too great a strain on his old friend’s hard-won restraint.  So instead Lammert turned and pulled down from the overhead rack the rucksack that held the few personal possessions he hadn’t chosen to entrust to the baggage compartment.

“But Prester-dear, consider all those months you spent teaching in Berun.  That so-stolid, so-worthy, so-dull academy town could shrink a tall guardsman into a tiny sapper, given a growing season with which to work.”

Caine’s measuring gestures with thumb and forefinger made it clear he wasn’t speaking of height.  Hastily, Lammert changed the subject.  “Speaking of guardsmen, where, beneath the canopy of heaven, is your military escort?”

“All gone.”  Caine languidly swept a hand out as if casting seed into the fields.  “Now that the Ossians have installed my uncle as their puppet upon the throne, the new parliament has eviscerated the household allowances of we remaining princes.  Thus I’m free to wander about on my own without the usual train of followers.”  He brightened.  “On the sunny side, I can also say what are supposed to be terrible things without making escorting eavesdroppers unhappy.”  His tone grew coaxing.  “To celebrate our reunion, could I persuade you to just the mildest bout of sodomy, do you think?”

That, of course, was when the Ossian inspectors knocked on the door from the corridor.

*****

“Mmm.  I must have been hungrier than I knew.  The parsnip soup was an easing.  And the callebird with citrus garnish was a joy.”  Lammert pushed his plate away.  “Now I can think.  Although the answer to your earlier question is still no, of course.”

Caine lowered his chin.  “Bother.  I thought it would be.  Will you take honey in your tea?”

“Yes, please.”

Caine had swept him off to Arabal’s, one of the tonier restaurants of the capital.  Of course, these days half the patrons were either Ossian or collaborators, which was why they hadn’t been asked for ration chits at the gilded front door.  Still, unpleasant company was a small price to pay for Caine being on his most mannerly, if not best, behavior.

“Sah, sah.  I’ll ask you again later, when you’re less tired and our surroundings are more congenial.  In the meantime,” Caine gestured to a folded-over cloth bag he’d placed on the spare chair at the table, “I’ve saved you this last half-moon’s issues of both the Court Journal and the Worker’s Proclamation, just in case they hadn’t made their way into your academy’s library.”

“Thank you.  I will need to catch up on my local news.  Seems I’ll be assigned back to pastoral work.”

“Do you know the name of your district temple-to-be?”

“No, not yet.  I have to report to the Clerk of Council after we’re done with lunch.” He eyed Caine, who was being cheerful in a dangerous way that Lammert recognized.  Caine knew perfectly well that Lammert was here in the capitol for reasons other than those he’d talk about in public.  “You can give me a ride.”

Blessings of Wisdom, Caine passed up his chance for word-play.  Instead he said, “To be sure.  Steam-cabs are rather fun, aren’t they?  Especially when you’re a prince and aren’t impeded by the traffic wardens.  Just this morning my driver took his chance to save time and avoid traffic by driving down the Westrun Palace Park’s bridal trail.  The groundskeepers were amazed.  So was Count Vosco.  So was his horse, rather expressively.  I made my driver back up at speed – strictly to check for damage, of course – and the horse’s expressions of discomfiture grew worthy of our Royal Dance Theater.  Alas, poor Vosco.”

“I’m sure Vosco’s was a salutary experience.”  The Count was a notorious collaborator, fond of getting his personal enemies sent to Ossian reformation camps.  Lammert wondered what he’d done to annoy Caine.  “Just remember, I’m fresh from stolid, dull Berun.  Consider my sedate nature when instructing our driver.”

Caine examined Lammert for a long few seconds, and then smiled like an angel.  “No, you haven’t changed all that much.”

Lammert gave him a sardonic look.

“You haven’t changed your determination to obey the bindings of your consecration, either.  That’s one constant.”  Caine’s voice had gentled.  He had no morals but he could be kind.  Then mischief lit his eyes.  “However, I referred to your underlying nature.  You were never stolid and dull as a youngling, no, no, no.  Or sedate.”  Caine was rarely kind for long.  Trust him to refer to the sticky fact that Lammert had been his very willing bedfellow at the Institute, back before Lammert had been chosen for the priesthood.  “You’ve always been both dutiful and venturesome, though.  Your return from Berun surprised me not a whit.  I knew you’d yield to necessity after I explained to our friends my desire for your company.”

Restraining an urge to glare, Lammert made himself smile again.  Only Caine would discuss Resistance business at a table in Arabal’s.  Of course, that was also why Caine got away with such behavior.  Picking out any significant bit amidst his constant misconduct was like picking out one single, Rhemian coin on a circle dancer’s spangled vest while the dancer was whirling.

Blithely, Caine continued.  “Since I’ve determined to take up hunting again, I want your advice.  You always make little complexities of the game laws clear for me, much clearer than my protocol tutors ever managed to do.”

Lammert hoped his smile didn’t waver.  By the Seven, did Caine actually mean what he seemed to imply?  Lammert had been informed that he would be Caine’s warden within the resistance, but not precisely of what Caine’s duties would be.

“Remember that time you had to explain why the Royal Huntmaster was furious when I accidentally shot one of his gaze-hounds?”

“Yes.  A thunderous amount of shouting ensued.”  That hound had been vicious but also the late King’s favorite.  Untouchable.  Caine had shot it quite deliberately after it savaged a dog-girl and then laughed in the Huntmaster’s face over the corpse.  “You got caned like an errant Guards recruit.”  While still laughing.

“There, you see?  It’s best to have a wise advisor when one is to carry a loaded gun.”  Caine smiled, and it wasn’t angelic at all.  Lammert felt a chill.  Was that really why the resistance wanted Caine, to use as an assassin?

Prince Caine would do his job well.

For a moment, he seemed to feel the weight of Caine’s assessing gaze.  But all his Prince said was, “And now it’s time for dessert.”

II

Prince Caine waved an idle hand to summon the waiter.  Lammert did love his sweets, although the sweets didn’t love Lammert’s digestion.  Caine was rediscovering how much he enjoyed forcing his prester to indulge whenever he had the chance, and the required fasts would balance matters out so that Lammert wouldn’t be at all unhappy.  For once, even the daemoni couldn’t complain.  None of the Seven on High demanded complete abstinence from sweets for their consecrated priesthoods, as was not the case with sex, curse Six of them.  Caine’s own patron Master-Mistress was the sole Being who had more sense than to demand celibacy of his-her priests.  Alas that Lammert served Wisdom.

The waiter now standing attentive by their table, Caine asked, “What will you have?  Don’t you dare spurn the pastry-master’s artistry.  Morbeath’s infant avatar would weep.”

Lammert sighed, smiled, and said, “The honey-cakes.”  He yielded beautifully.  He’d always yielded beautifully.

Feeling appeased, Caine turned the conversation to other matters until the dessert arrived.  The mind also had its pleasures, after all, and of those Lammert was a master.  Just now he was explaining the latest discoveries in astronomy and making them entertaining.  How charming to have the keenest intellect of their particular intake at the Institute for his very own dear friend.  Caine’s very own, that is, if one didn’t count the daemoni, the resistance, and every grubby parishioner-to-be of Lammert’s future temple.  All of which could have been made amusing, if not for the one, blistering constraint.

Beah, how Caine wished he could throw Lammert down in front of those sacred altars of his, tear the grey robe of consecration away from him, and show the Seven how Lammert should look when he was being dutiful:  determined, terrified, rapt, ravenous, and finally joyous—

“Caine.”  The deep voice was a quiet, rich rumble.  But Caine also liked it strained to harshness, crying out, unable to remain silent—  “Caine.  Have we tried your restraint to breaking?  I knew this first meeting would be hard for you.”

Caine blinked, reached for his wine, and had a sip.  It was a crisp, green talget from the north slopes of the Black River, lush with the captured scents of summer.  Restored, he could say, “No, no, that’s all right.  I planned for this.”

“Oh, so?”  Lammert seemed genuinely surprised.

Caine smiled.  “I’ve recently met a very large young man with lovely hair.  Rich, black curls, in fact.  And he’s a dedicated professional, enough so to consent to having his hair shorn short.  Although I was careful to make sure he’d be happy with his barbering.  The greater part of my payment went between-the-sleeves, directly into his purse rather than to his procurator.”

“Hum.”  This time his prester’s deep voice was flat and strained.

“Yes.  We’ll meet later tonight at one of Charbone’s more expensive, if illegal, rendezvous.  There he’ll be bound, gagged, and spread out charmingly upon a well-padded and comfortable surface while dressed in a coarse robe of a color strangely close to consecrated grey.  I shall remove that detestable and ugly robe from him, very probably with a knife.  Then I shall fornicate with him in a number of exotic but harmless ways, all under the pretense that the acts I commit are rapine and that my victim is the devout, chaste, unwilling-primarily-in-principle, and ultimately well-pleased Prester Lammert.”  Caine was surprised by how caressing his voice sounded as he finished, “Think of me this evening, dear heart.  I’ll be thinking of you.”

Lammert, who’d closed his eyes about half-way through this recitation, opened them again and said, “Somehow I knew you’d make me sorry that I weakened and asked for details.” His tone was rueful.  Then he took a deep breath, and Caine waited with interest to hear what else he’d have to say.  “I know you don’t understand half the problems with telling me what you just did.  But swear to me you won’t drink or smoke before you do any of this.  Grant me that, at least.”

True, ropes and knives could be tricky.  It was always nice to be able to comprehend Lammert’s concerns. “I promise,” Caine said.

Lammert supported his forehead on his hand, massaging his temple with his thumb. “And now you’re going to say it, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

The smile was weary but genuine.  “Sah.  At a corner table in Arabal’s, of course, after sharing those horribly degenerate plans.  Go on, then.”

“I love you.”

“By the Seven, your timing remains as awful as it ever was.”  Lammert looked at his plate, poked at the honey-cake, and then bore down with his fork.  Caine recalled Lammert writing in one of his daily letters from Berun that waste was not pleasing to the daemoni, especially in a time of shortage.  “Time and again I said the words, and nothing came back from you.  To be honest, I didn’t much care until you changed your mind.” 

Pausing to chew, Lammert tossed his head in mock amazement.  Then he continued, “I still remember your decision to inform me of your newly-comprehended feeling the very evening I’d been chosen for consecration, three turns after I could no longer be bound by such a bond with any other mortal.”  When he’d chewed again and swallowed, Lammert told the remaining two-thirds of the honey-cake, “As for your mistimed proclamation today, remember that I’ll be praying, quite chastely as you said, at my new temple close tonight.  Although now I imagine I’ll need the sequence that bridles the flesh.  Again.”

Oh Master-Mistress, Lammert would be praying, prostrate on a cold, stone floor, alone and undistracted.  He’d be all too aware of what was happening in a very different district of Charbone.  He could have developed sudden plans to reacquaint himself with edifying friends or to attend some lecture on Rhemian aqueduct design, but no.  This news was a gift, and Lammert knew that perfectly well.  It was as close as his prester could honorably come to returning those three words of yielding Caine had heard from him so often when they were both younglings, and now so hungered to hear again when he couldn’t, when it was too late. 

Caine smiled and hoped it looked as dazzled as he felt, even as he clutched the edge of the table with both hands and squeezed hard.  Mustn’t assault Lammert in Arabal’s. It will make him dreadfully unhappy and embarrassed.  Mustn’t assault Lammert in Arabal’s.  It will make him dreadfully unhappy and embarrassed.  Mustn’t assault—

Lammert glanced up, alarmed.  “When they asked me to return to Charbone, I should have told the Temple Council to—”

“No, don’t worry.  Give me a few ticks and I’ll be fine.  In fact, this is good discipline.”  Caine blinked, bemused.  “Really, I suppose I’m bridling the flesh, aren’t I?”

There was a suspended moment.  Then Lammert almost shouted with laughter.  Caine was glad to find he could let go of the table and join the merriment.

*****

Even Caine could grow tired of pleasure at last.  Although, to tell truth, he might only have been turning from one kind of pleasure to another.  No, that thought wasn’t quite right either.  His first pleasure had been what led him on to his second, ensconced here in this small side chapel down in the dockside district temple.

The turn was very late, past the time when night’s excitements wore down to weariness, and the temple was empty aside from Prester Lammert.  The locals would either be laboring at what they shouldn’t do or sleeping to recover from the labor that they must do.  Parishioners of this temple were poor as so many city pi-birds.  Beautiful mosaic work in their temple chapels, though.  Caine would have to study the place at length, some time when he didn’t have Lammert about to win the competition for his attention.

Caine planted his umbrella firmly on the patterned stone tiles, leaned on it, and studied his friend.  “There you are!  And prone as promised, not that I would dare doubt you.”

Did he just imagine the ripple moving through the massive, outstretched body?  Perhaps it was the candlelight.

“But you’re not wearing your glasses.  I’m not certain if I like those little red welts on the bridge of your nose.  Eah, perhaps I do.”

Even Lammert couldn’t concentrate under these circumstances, Caine supposed.  His prester gathered himself together and stood up.  Somehow Caine was reminded of a great brindled bear, disturbed by a careless hunter while it snuffled out grubs beneath a hollow log, rising up to its full height.

Odd that Lammert never noticed this aspect of himself.   He never remembered, for example, that he had been the one to pluck away the dog-whip that Floxam was using to torture those new boys, and to use said whip to lash Floxam and his cronies all the way down the tutorial cloisters and back up again.  My, they had certainly remembered Lammert’s little lesson or, at least, the welts that went with it.  Caine hadn’t even needed threats to keep them quiet around the tutors.

He was distracted from happy memories of his schooldays by Lammert’s acerbic, “And you are here because—  No, I shouldn’t ask.”

“No, you shouldn’t.  I’ll tell you in any case.”

“Joy.”

“Mine, at least, and a torment that half-pleases you.”  Lammert grimaced, but turned a hand up in agreement, giving Caine his point as Caine spoke again.  “Not entirely torment, though.  I know you’ll have worried.  You always do.”  Caine raised his little finger.  “Take heart.  This time, all went well.  Complex exertions completed, no damage done, much recompense given, and great enjoyment achieved.”  Lammert raised his chin in acknowledgement and started to turn away. “But, somehow, you are the more appealing encore.  Hence, I am here.”

Lammert stilled, his face averted.  “Of course I interest you.  I remain unachieved.”

“In some sense, yes.  However, as we both also know, in some sense no.”

“I chose to tell you of my evening, so my partial acquiescence is my own fault.”  Lammert turned back. His gaze was now direct.  “Even so, as I should, and as makes sense, I tried to keep my mind on my own business.  And, as I knew I would, I failed.”  Lammert’s smile was both bitter and gentle.

Caine smiled in return. “My heart, I wanted you to fail.”  But that was oddly wrong, he discovered as he heard his own words.  Interested, Caine reconsidered and then corrected himself. “Although perhaps not entirely.”

He clicked his tongue.  “In any case, I believe—  Yes, I believe I feel quite a bit better now.  Not as wrung out as I thought at first, but still nicely relaxed.  So at least all your perturbation didn’t go for naught.”  He watched his prester’s eyes narrow.  Oh yes, Lammert, I was certainly thinking of you and your battle while I enjoyed my contrived tussles.

Quite deliberately, Caine reached down a hand and ran it thoughtfully along the front of his trousers.  Relaxed but not entirely exhausted was an accurate assessment.  Under those circumstances, his own touch on his staff was especially good.

Lammert tossed his head.  “How you can make even that look elegant, I’ll never know.”  Without another word, he turned back away and again prostrated himself on the floor.  He sank to his knees, then onto his belly, with a smooth grace honed by ten thousand repetitions of ritual, to end with his form prone again, his head turned to one side.  Caine was charmed.

He strolled forward to take one step across Lammert, and then turned to stand with one boot planted to either side of his prester’s waist.  Lammert never moved.  His great frame held to the classic form of consecrated prayer, the one so often depicted in the sort of paintings sold to the pious to decorate bedroom walls.  Caine looked at what lay beneath him.  He could swoop, straddle, grasp both shoulders, pin down—  Even Lammert’s fingers were relaxed, curled gently into a traditional gesture of appeal to the daemoni.  “You trust me.  You shouldn’t.”

Without twisting to look up, without even troubling to open his eyes, Lammert asked, “Shouldn’t trust you now, or shouldn’t trust you always?”

Silence.  Then Caine said, “Always is the problem.  Odd, but just now you’re safe.”  In truth, Lammert could trust him right at this particular moment.  Caine found he was disarmed by the vulnerability so appealingly displayed below him, the very vulnerability he most desired.  The admission came to Caine dressed with pain, but that pain was at least intriguing and thus entertaining.  No wonder, back at the academy, Caine had taken so long to understand what Lammert was offering him:  this thing called love was very twisty.

The slight, amused quirk of Lammert’s generous lips was exquisite.  Again Caine stroked himself with his free hand, but he knew his expression was rueful, not that Lammert could see.  “I don’t entirely know why you’re safe, my heart.  Just now I should be yanking up that robe of yours as prologue to riding you rougher than a rented hack.  But I’m not.”

“Once more, thank you for truth.  Your honesty does give me joy.”  The quirk turned into a grin.  “Also, discomfort.  So, if you’ll leave me to finish my meditations, Your Serenity?”

Caine prodded his prester once between the shoulder blades with the ferule of his umbrella. “Your Serenity?”

“Caine.”  Lammert laughed, still without opening his eyes.  “Caine, Caine.  Go away, Caine.”

Shifting his umbrella, Caine lifted one booted foot and rested it lightly, if only for a moment, on the side of Lammert’s neck.  He knew that if he lingered he’d fall, making his own words a lie.  Then Lammert would sorrow, alas.  “I shall write you a poem, fairest cruelty.”  The Prester ignored him in favor of some esoteric meditation, as well he should.  Lammert really was rather good at this daemoni-service of his when Caine wasn’t distracting him.

With care not to injure, Caine stepped away, turned, and sauntered out of the chapel.  As he went, he trailed his fingers across the fresco-work, enjoying the subtle, varied textures of the tiles.  Well.  He had Lammert back, which was as it should be.  And there must be pleasant ways to mine priestly constraints for more amusement.  Perhaps he should consult the large body of pornography about the consecrated?

Come to think, he’d been letting his annoyance at the sacred confiscation of his best-beloved interfere with such sensual pleasures as could be derived from the situation.  That paid-boy, for example, had been delicious in his off-grey gown.  Caine would have to visit him again.

III

Behind Caine, stretched across the cold, stone floor of the chapel, Prester Lammert shuddered once, hard, his movement observed by none but the daemoni.  A gesture of pleasure or a gesture of dread; in the end, it made no difference.  The daemoni kept such knowledge to themselves.

*****

It wasn’t until two days later that they found the time to stroll together in the Westrum Palace Park and discuss death.  Both of them knew that the other walkers likely included an Ossian informant or two, but neither was in a mood to care.  They did take the precaution of working their way down a broad, empty grassy slope towards the edge of the boating lake, where the breeze would carry their words out towards the water.  The day was bracing enough, uncertain with alternating cloud and sun, that no one was risking the swan boats and paddle skiffs.

Lammert lectured Caine on the sort of game that they’d toyed with at the Institute, on ways to watch, on signals, and on ciphers.  Until he wandered off his topic into worrying, Caine seemed to be taking mental notes.  Now, though, Caine was staring out over the lake with a dreamy smile on his face.

Caine would care about the fine points of being a competent assassin, Lammert knew. He took all his sports seriously, and viewed a botched hunt as unbearably sloppy.  Sloppiness was probably much of what had turned him against the Ossians.  As he’d complained to Lammert in a steam-cab yesterday, an Ossian troop couldn’t even arrest a small boy for shying a stone without breaking three windows and kicking a dog.  Likely they would be the wrong dog and boy, to boot, ones who had been running errands for Caine.  But none of that meant Caine cared much about the perils or at all about the moral implications of the tasks he would soon be assigned.

Lammert asked, “Are you paying attention?”

“Not since you started dithering about the risk.  If you’re going to change the subject, couldn’t it be to something pleasant, something that will deceive any onlookers?”  Caine fell to his knees, spread his arms wide.  “If not sodomy, suckling?  I’ve hybridized some wonderful skills by attending to both genders.”

Lammert glared at him for a few seconds.  Caine moved to rest both his hands on the handle of his furled umbrella and looked hopeful.  Lammert found he could only say, “I’d miss your teasing if you were gone.”

“Oh, so?”

“One of ten-thousand-ten reasons I want you safe.”

“No safety to be had, my heart.”  Caine let his umbrella drop from his grip.  “When it rains hard enough, everyone is soaked sooner or later.  Even princes with umbrellas.”  For him, the words were sophisticated philosophizing.

Lammert smiled and said, “I still wish there was more that I could do.”

“Eah.  So, then, bless me.”  Caine smiled back, looking almost shy.  “That, at least, you can do.”

“Oh, Caine.”  Lammert stepped close and placed one hand on each of Caine’s shoulders, on the strong, living curves into the neck, in the formal gesture of blessing.  “You mad thing.”

Caine dipped his head dutifully to receive his blessing.  Then, first goal achieved, he said, “Not mad, bad.”  His head darted forward suddenly, and even through the thick cloth of his robe Lammert felt the nip of teeth on his belly.  Lammert’s thighs, his stomach, his hips all seemed to contract with the sudden shock.  He kneed Caine away, keeping the gesture as gentle as he could.  He didn’t need his strength.  As he’d expected, Caine didn’t resist.  Rather, he fell to sprawl out on the grass, laughing.

For a long moment, Lammert looked down at his prince.  Then he felt his shoulders slump.  As if some suspending strings had been cut, he sat down next to Caine.  “Sah, Caine, sah.  Just who is the one who’s bad, here?  I’ll be the agent dispatching you to murder.”

Seemingly alarmed, Caine sat upright, glancing around for possible eavesdroppers.  His features as he did so were quite still, somehow feral.  Then, his voice tentative, he turned back and asked, “Is that so very wrong?  I consent to this usage, after all, and you’re only the messenger.”

“Messenger, agent, enabler:  as responsible as you are, really.  More so.  I grasp fully what I do.”  Lammert ran his hands through the long yellowed grass.  “But not to act is to abet evils, too.  And if I refrain, someone must act in my stead.”  His fingers twisted and he tugged hard, but not hard enough to uproot the blades.  Instead seeds stripped off in his fingers and blew away in the breeze towards the water.  “Comparing probabilities of evil.  Not the sort of advanced mathematics that I’ve always loved.”

“Safer you than me.  You had better luck teaching me the calculus than ethics, if you’ll remember.”  Caine had stuck a blade of grass into his mouth, laced his hands behind his head, and lain back, for all as if this were high summer and not a raw day close to the winter solstice.  “That’s why you’re here.  I *can* carry a bargain.  I’ve stayed bound by what we swore the night of your consecration.”

“Yes.”  The memory was a comfort to Lammert.  “I would never shy from your company merely to protect my newly-sanctified conscience, and you would accept a few prohibitions on your personal amusements.”

“It’s never been that hard.  Blood is messy, fear soon yields to misery, and younglings do fidget and fuss between entertainments, or so I tell myself.  And the true grey serge of the consecrated might chafe me.”

Lammert swallowed a chuckle.  “Yes, it might.  And I agree, our bargain’s not that hard.”  Not hard compared to, say, starvation.  “Although some of your correspondence almost ate holes through the stationery.”

“Almost?  I must try harder.”

“Don’t strain yourself.  I’ve returned.  You can torment me in person.”

“Yes.  Yes, you have.  Yes, I shall.”  In a tone of mild complaint, Caine added, “I’d kiss your hands a hundred times in gratitude, but the Seven knows where that would end.”

“Sah.  Not in tears but in misery, I’m afraid.  Carry your bargain.”

Caine shrugged, sat up, and reached towards where his umbrella lay in the grass.  “As always.”

“Then I’ll carry my new qualms myself.”  They would be heavy, but that really wasn’t Caine’s business.

“A fresh bargain?”

“No, a gift.”

Caine got up.  “An early winterfest gift, and all for me.  Now, what would you like in return?”  He offered a hand and Lammert took it without hesitation.  Caine strained, heaved him to his feet.  Then he wrapped Lammert into the filial embrace that they hadn’t shared at the train station.  For long seconds Lammert was enfolded in strong arms, felt soft hair against his cheek, and breathed in the clean scent of Caine.  At last Caine let him go and proffered an arm so that they could walk as friends should, with arms linked, side by side, back towards the Lindenwalk entrance to the park.

As they strolled up the grassy slope, Lammert said, “A very pleasant gift.”

“It was, wasn’t it?  I shall have to try that again some time.  After all, I must have a few gentle amusements ready for when I am old, my body grows weary, and my tastes become jaded.”

Lammert chuckled, and said “Why, Caine.  That was actually quite judicious.”

“Your usual effect, I suppose.  Sah, dissipation can grow repetitious without your complicating presence to tangle my normal choices into a bewildering snarl.  Even for that, I find I missed you.”

“Thank you, Caine.”

“Welcome home, my heart.  I see you with rejoicing.”

On the whole, being executed by the Ossians would have been easier than dealing with his Prince again.  But for Lammert, too, a difficult life still had its joys.  “I rejoice to see you, Friend Caine.”

 

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